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established his daguerreotype studio in conjunction
with a sewing machine business in Quebec City in
December 1854. At the height of his brief photographic
career, he operated up to three studios. Married in 1849
to Elise L’Heureux (L’Hérault), she, like other husband
and wife photography teams such as Darius Reynold
Kinsey and his wife Tabitha, participated fully and
sometimes independently in the photography business.
Between 1857–1858, Elise worked under the name
Madame Livernois and took daguerreotype portraits
of children. After her husband died on October 11,
1865, of tuberculosis, she assumed management of his
studio and established a partnership in May 1866 with
her son-in-law, the photographer Louis Bienvenu; the
Livernois & Bienvenu partnership dissolved in April
- By December 1873, her son Jules-Ernest Liver-
nois, born on August 19, 1851, in Saint-Zéphirin-de-
Courval, Quebec, assumed ownership of the Livernois
studio. J.E. Livernois perpetuated his parents’ vision
by traveling throughout Quebec for landscape views
and exterior group portraits, much as his competitor
William Notman and his sons did throughout Quebec
and other parts of Canada. Unlike Notman and Alex-
ander Henderson, however, the Livernois family spent
little time photographing outside Quebec. After J.E.
Livernois’ death on June 8, 1933 in Quebec City, the
portrait studio continued to operate until 1974, fi rst by
J.E. Livernois’ son Jules Livernois (1877–1952), then
by an owner-operator, who left in 1969; J.E. Livernois
Limitée went into bankruptcy in 1979. The largest col-
lections of the Livernois photographs, a remarkable,
detailed record of many aspects of life in Quebec, are
preserved by the Library and Archives Canada and the
Archives nationales du Québec. J.E. Livernois was one
of four 19th-century photographers commemorated with
a Canadian postage stamp in 1989. The Livernois family
is also memorialized in Quebec place names.
David Mattison
LLEWELYN, JOHN DILLWYN
(1810–1882)
Welsh photographer, polymath, and landowner
John Dillwyn Llewelyn was born John Dillwyn 12 Janu-
ary 1810 at The Willows, Swansea, the second child
and eldest son of Lewis Weston Dillwyn, Fellow of the
Royal Society and the Linnean Society, and Mary, nee
Llewelyn. Upon coming of age, he assumed additionally
his maternal grandfather’s surname Llewelyn inheriting
his estates. He usually signed himself J.D. Llewelyn.
Grandfather Llewelyn died in 1817 and the fam-
ily moved to Penllergare, his former estate. In 1833
Llewelyn married Emma Thomasina Talbot, youngest
daughter of Lady Mary Lucy and Thomas Mansel Talbot
of Penrice and Margam, and youngest cousin of Henry
Fox Talbot of Lacock Abbey. Children included the
eldest, Thereza who married Nevil Story Maskelyne.
At Penllergare, Llewelyn designed a supreme example
of Victorian landscaping, creating two artifi cial lakes,
a man made waterfall and growing many exotic trees
and plants, some from Henry Talbot, and Sir Joseph
Hooker of Kew. In his walled garden he grew tea, cof-
fee, pineapples, and created a heated glasshouse for the
propagation of orchids with a waterfall and pond.
Educated by private tutors, Llewelyn matriculated
at Oriel College, Oxford in 1827. He met many of the
leading scientists of the period including Sir Charles
Wheatstone, Faraday, John Wheeley Gough Gutch,
another early photographer, and the Groves. In 1844 he
assisted Wheatstone with the fi rst ever experiments in
sub-marine telegraphy off the Mumbles, south Wales.
The same year he welcomed Isambard Kingdom Brunel
to Swansea for the south Wales extension of the Great
Western Railway.
Llewelyn was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society,
1836, and the Linnean Society, 1837. Henry Talbot con-
sidered Llewelyn to be the fi rst botanical photographer.
In 1842 Llewleyn used the daguerreotype process to
send images of rare orchids to Kew for identifi cation. In
1848 Llewelyn demonstrated the propulsion of a small
boat by an electric motor, the fi rst time this was done in
Britain, to the British Association for the Advancement
of Science meeting in Swansea.
Llewelyn’s public duties included being a magistrate
and a member of, many local committees. He endowed
schools, churches, and a large park for the people of
Swansea.
News of Talbot’s photographic discovery reached
Penllergare in February 1839, from Talbot. Llewelyn
immediately began experimenting with the new process
and also the daguerreotype process. Early photogenic
drawings have disappeared but the earliest daguerreo-
type is dated 1840. His friend, and distant relative, Cal-
vert Richard Jones, also joined in the local excitement.
Later photographic friends included Antoine Claudet,
with whom Llewelyn carried out experiments on the
daguerreotype process, and Philip Delamotte. Llewelyn
tried all the early processes but mainly used the calotype
and collodion. When Talbot challenged Laroche in 1854
for an infringement of his calotype patent, Llewelyn
wrote to Peter Fry:
I heartily grieve to hear of all his present litigation, his fi rst
step to secure himself an exclusive monopoly was a most
inadvised one. It has put him in a false position and must
terminate in an abundant harvest of vexation, trouble and
loss. It seems however to be with him a kind of monoma-
nia—he must be a little insane on that point.
Llewleyn also tried the photoglyphic drawing process
and was invited by Talbot to visit Lacock to discuss it.